• My mother climbed out first.
• Sixty-four. Silver bob. A pale pink cardigan. Smiling like she’d come to deliver a birthday cake.
• “Surprise!” she said. She opened her arms wide. “We thought we’d spend the week with you!”

• Behind her, Melissa was already opening the trunk of the minivan.
• Thirty-five. Three years younger than me. Blonde. Pretty. In leggings and an oversized Clemson sweatshirt. She didn’t look at me. She was looking at the house.
• Her husband climbed out of the driver’s side. Ben. Forty. A high school chemistry teacher from outside Atlanta. Tall. Quiet. Glasses. He looked tired and uncomfortable. He gave me a small wave.
• Their two kids stumbled out onto the gravel.
• Poppy, eight. Long blonde hair. In pajamas with cartoon foxes on them. Clutching a stuffed rabbit.
• And Jonah, five. Curly brown hair. Half asleep. Clutching a stuffed shark.

• Then came the luggage.

• Four enormous suitcases. Hard-shell. Matching. The big ones. The kind you take on a two-week trip to Europe.
• Two heavy Yeti coolers.
• A folding crib, even though nobody in the family was young enough to need a crib.
• Beach chairs. Plastic buckets. Shovels. Boogie boards. A beach umbrella. Toys. Grocery bags. A box of wine. A case of Diet Coke.
• Enough supplies to occupy a small vacation rental for a month.

• I looked at the luggage.
• Then I looked at my mother.
• “You didn’t call,” I said.

• “Oh, sweetheart.” My mother waved her hand. “Don’t make a big thing of it.”

• My father appeared beside her.
• Sixty-eight. Retired insurance adjuster. Tall. Broad. Gray buzz cut. A windbreaker zipped up to his chin. He walked around the front of the Pilot and stood next to my mother with his hands on his hips.
• He looked at my house.
• He looked at me.
• “Family doesn’t need reservations,” he said.

• I remember staring at him.
• “Actually,” I said, “when it’s somebody else’s house, they do.”

• He gave me that look.
• The look. The one I’ve been getting since I was six. Head tilted. Lips pressed together. Eyebrows raised. Paternal disappointment.
• “Still so sensitive,” he said.

• Within an hour, my peaceful house looked like a crowded airport terminal.

• Melissa claimed my premium guest suite before I’d even offered anybody a bedroom.
• She walked straight through the front door. Past me. Down the hall. She opened the door to the guest suite. The one with the private deck. The one I rent for three hundred and fifty dollars a night.
• “Oh, this is nice,” she said. “Ben! Bring our bags in here!”

• She dragged the children’s bags into my office.
• My private office. The room at the end of the hall with the door I always keep closed. My desk. My two monitors. My filing cabinet with confidential client files. Contracts. Financial records. A nondisclosure agreement for a project I was working on for a shipping company in Norfolk.
• She dumped Poppy’s backpack on my desk. Jonah’s bag of toys on my chair. A plastic dinosaur rolled off the desk and hit the floor.
• “The kids can sleep in here,” she said. “On the floor. We brought sleeping bags.”

• Ben carried in the coolers without making eye contact.
• He set them in the kitchen. He opened one. It was full of hot dogs and juice boxes and string cheese and a bottle of tequila.
• He looked at me. Just for a second.
• “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
• Then he went back out to the car.

• My mother started opening cupboards.
• Every single one. In my kitchen. One after another. Looking at my plates. My glasses. My coffee mugs. My spices.
• “Oh, these are lovely,” she said. Holding up one of my hand-thrown ceramic bowls from a potter in Ocracoke. “Where’d you get these? Are they expensive?”

• My father changed the television channel.
• He didn’t ask. He walked into my living room, sat down on my couch, picked up my remote, and turned on the TV. He flipped through the channels until he found a baseball game. The Braves. He turned it up.

• And Melissa somehow found a rare bottle of wine.

• It was in a cabinet in the dining room. A small cabinet I’d thought was locked. It wasn’t. The latch was sticky. I’d never fixed it.
• Inside were six bottles. Special bottles. Gifts from clients. From my old business partner. From the Tidewater board when we sold.
• Melissa found the best one.
• A 2005 Château Margaux. My business partner gave it to me the day we signed the sale. He said, Save this for something that matters.
• I’d been saving it for two years.
• Melissa opened it with my corkscrew.
• She poured herself a generous glass. To the top. Like a glass of iced tea.
• 

     >>>PART 3